Final Thoughts

All told, the P9X79-E WS is about as much motherboard as you can find in the "consumer grade" market. It blurs the line between pro and hardcore enthusiast. The true pros who require the workstation features will be able to tap the huge quiver of expadability and functionality, including the improved rendering bandwidth from the PLX chips added to increase GPU lanes to the CPU and full Xeon processor support. The average person looking into a motherbaord will be pleased with the storage expandability, gamers will also apprecaite the extra GPU bandwidth and full GPU scalability, overclockers will find plenty of room to play, and everyone will appreciate the emphasis on this motherboard "just working" with flagship features like Dr. Power to fend off PSU abnormalities which can be catastrophic. This P9X79-E WS does omit some of the ancilliary features that the highest-end Deluxe board has, but since are both enthusiast channel boards, there's a fairly subtle difference there apart from "conveniences" like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or Thunderbolt. The P9X79-E WS also trims some of the more complex "super tweak" options for better stability, but really, again, it shouldn't feel as though it's holding you back unless you really know what the hell you're doing with some very precise settings.

The software and UEFI are extremely user-friendly and streamlined, and packs a wallop of features we've become fond of. The software really does add value to the package and does alot to enhance the end user experience. The board is feature-packed beyond the basic hardcore X79 chipset, with bonuses such as power and reset buttons onboard, detailed diagnostics indication via Q-codes and boot status lights, USB BIOS Flashback, removable BIOS chips which can be replaced instead of bricking your whole board if you really muck things up, Dr. Power, etc. I've said it before, but it's really the little things that all add up to create a great experience, like all of the 4-pin fan headers being in pleasantly logical locations. I could go on, but then what good would the preceding pages be? There's so much to love, except...

at $500, the P9X79-E WS is going to be a bit of a pill to swallow. For the pros who might best tap the full potential of this board, it's a no-brainer. Those GPU configs that cost in the 4-figures will come alive on the P9X79-E WS like none other, and few others will allow you to rock a Xeon processor. But even for the enthusiast, who will be heavily-invested in a platform like X79 even when selecting the most budget-restricted components, the $500 price tag is hefty. Other than that though, we've beat the crap out of this board for awhile now, it's been resilient (and has become more resilient with each BIOS ASUS has rolled out), and really rocks an expandable, nearly-unmatched featureset when it comes to raw horsepower with ASUS' user-friendly utilities as the icing on top.

The Good

The Bad

Tons of included accessories

Class-leading expandability / utility

Xeon support

Unbuffered Memory Support

Up to quad-GPU x16

Robust, reliable design

Feature-rich UEFI / utilities

Lots of on-board conveniences

Dual low-CPU utilization Intel NICs

$500 price tag

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